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Celebrated as a classic of South Korean cinema, this 1961 film depicts the post–Korean War breakdown of society through the decline of two brothers. One is a wounded veteran who has no job and who has turned to drink. Nothing goes right for him: he’s offered a part in a film, but when he hears the character’s story described as an approximation of his own, he balks at exploiting his war experience and turns it down. Then the day after he runs into the love of his life, a former nurse, she gets pushed out a window by a maniacal poet. The other brother is a low-paid office worker with a pregnant wife, a demented mother, and a constant raging toothache that he can’t afford to have treated. The unremitting intensity and bleakness of The Aimless Bullet are admirable, though they come at a price. In the theatricalized interior scenes, director Yu Hyun-mok’s style can get as oppressive as the script is wordy. But whenever the action moves outdoors, through urban settings of astonishing grimness, the film takes off, becoming vivid and piercing in a manner reminiscent, alternately, of Rossellini and of Kurosawa. The final cab-ride sequence is a depressing tour de force. In Korean with English subtitles. (black and white/110 minutes)
BY CHRIS FUJIWARA
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